Recently I told someone, “yeah, people die every day, but that day was the first day my person died.”
When you lose someone you love, the loss, the grief, your reaction to it all — they’re all unique. They can’t be replicated by others. For the most part, they probably won’t even be replicated by you the next time you lose someone.
Over 40 years ago, Vice President Biden lost his first wife and daughter in a car crash. Yesterday, May 30th, he lost his son Beau Biden, who passed away of brain cancer.
The Washington Post pieced together an article on VP Joe Biden with the angle of grief and how Biden may be handling this loss. The article draws from a speech the vice president gave to a crowd of families who had lost a loved one.
When I found this Washington Post article it resonated. His words make sense and illicit nods of approval.
My main complaint of the article is when the writer states, “Biden appeared to transform from a vice president into a grief-stricken man.” No one transforms into a grief-stricken person, they are grief-stricken.
He is a vice president who has lived and is now living through grief. There’s no way to compartmentalize, which is a reality VP Biden is well aware of.
Below are two of the most poignant quotes, for the rest read here.
On the moment you know:
“I got a phone call saying my family had been in an accident. Just like you guys know by the tone of a phone call, you just knew. You knew when the walked up the path, you knew when the call came. You knew, you just felt it in your bones, something bad happened. I knew…I don’t know how I knew.”
On the little moments that remind you:
“Just when you think you’re going to make it, you’re driving down the road and you pass a field and you see a flower, and it reminds you. Or you hear a tune on the radio. Or you just look up into the night and, you know, you think, ‘Maybe I’m not going to make it, man.’ Because you feel at that moment the way you felt the day you got the news.”
